Byzantine homilies that focus primarily on the Virgin Mary or Theotokos (‘God-bearer’) survive from about the beginning of the fifth century ce onwards. These are liturgical orations, which were usually delivered in offices or Eucharistic services that celebrated the memory of the Virgin or (from about the middle of the sixth century onwards) feasts that honoured events in her life. The festal homilies combine praise, dramatic narrative, and supplication in their approach to the holy subject. Although such works may originally have been delivered extempore, they were edited (either by their authors or perhaps by scribes) and largely transmitted in liturgical collections that began to be compiled during the Middle Byzantine period (Ehrhard 1936–52). According to later typika (‘rules’), these orations continued to be read aloud in churches and monasteries in the course of services such as orthros (the morning office) or in all-night vigils. The Marian festal homilies may also have served as devotional reading for pious believers, both clerical and lay, who had access to manuscripts in patriarchal or monastic libraries.
Marian festal homilies are important not only in the context of Byzantine doctrine and devotion to the Theotokos, but also with respect to the wider Christian tradition. Eastern Christian preachers, who addressed their congregations in Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and other languages—depending on where they were located within Byzantine or Byzantine-influenced territories—demonstrated Mary’s centrality to Christological doctrine: she was the human being who willingly gave her consent to God and provided him with the physical body that he assumed in his Incarnation. Byzantine preachers thus emphasized both the humanity of the Virgin Mary, as evidenced in her normal (although miraculous) conception from Joachim and Anna and actual death, but also her purity (in both physical and moral terms), which made her eligible to conceive and give birth to Christ, the Logos and Son of God. In addition to propounding this theological message by means of narrative, typological exegesis, and poetic imagery, Byzantine preachers increasingly invoked Mary as intercessor and protector of orthodox Christians. A growing belief in her role as defender of the imperial city of Constantinople from about the middle of the sixth century onwards—but especially after the Avar siege of 626—inspired direct invocation of this holy figure, especially in homilies that celebrated her relics or recent military victories. These texts offer unique theological and spiritual insights concerning the Mother of God that merit much wider appreciation than they have so far received.
Problems remain, however, with regard to the accessibility and reliability of the surviving Byzantine festal homilies. Although translations of texts into modern languages are increasing (see, for example, Daley 1998; Constas 2003; Cunningham 2008), the majority can still only be accessed in their original versions. Some texts, especially from the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, also remain unedited (Antonopoulou 2011, 2013). And, of those that are published, the editions are frequently defective (being based on just one of the numerous surviving manuscripts) and attributions to individual preachers sometimes remain uncertain. Nevertheless, work on all of these issues continues, as more scholars (including historical and dogmatic theologians, Mariologists, and philologists) have become interested in the field in recent years.
For the purposes of this article, I will limit my scope to the Marian festal homilies that were delivered in Greek—either in Constantinople, Byzantine-ruled territories, or Palestine—that date roughly to the period between the early fifth and fifteenth centuries. I shall focus on three main features that are central to Byzantine festal preaching, including the dogmatic teaching of Mary’s Christological importance, the narrative of her legendary birth, life, and death, and the invocation of her intercessory power. It is likely that homilies had a profound effect on Christians’ relationship with the Mother of God throughout the Byzantine period and beyond—not only because of their direct impact on congregations or readers, but also because they influenced other liturgical genres, including hymnography and hagiography.
From the early fifth century onwards, preachers used their sermons on the Virgin Mary as opportunities to teach congregations about her important role in the Incarnation of Christ. They taught that the Theotokos (‘God-bearer’) enabled the Son and Word of God to enter creation ontologically as ‘God-man’; not only did she provide him with his human nature, but she also contained within her womb the uncontainable God. Nestorius, who sought to defend a more literal and historical understanding of the Incarnation, preached against the use of the term Theotokos for Mary after he was appointed archbishop of Constantinople in 428. However, his opponents, including Cyril of Alexandria and Proclus of Constantinople, drew on a doctrinal position that had already been expressed in homilies composed by contemporary bishops including Hesychius of Jerusalem and Atticus of Constantinople when they defended Mary’s conception and birth-giving of God (Constas 2003; Price 2008). Once Nestorius had been condemned—and the Theotokos title upheld—at the council of Ephesus in 431, both preachers and hymnographers continued to celebrate Mary’s role as the human guarantor of the simultaneous divinity and the humanity of Christ.
The Marian homilies that were composed in this formative period expounded the Incarnation of Christ, the God-man, as well as the Virgin’s important role in this process, especially with the help of typological and poetic imagery. Hesychius of Jerusalem, for example, chose images for the Virgin that were suggestive of her virginal fecundity, as we see in his use of such epithets as ‘unseeded, fertile, and uncultivated garden’, ‘lamp without an orifice’, ‘ark of life’, and others (Aubineau 1978: 1.158–60). Several decades later, when preaching in honour of the feast of Mary’s Memory (probably celebrated on 26 December in Constantinople), Proclus of Constantinople famously compared her to a loom on which the ‘robe’ of the Incarnation had been woven:
[She was] … the awesome loom of the divine economy upon which the robe (cf. Jn 19:23) of union was ineffably woven. The loom-worker was the Holy Spirit; the wool-worker the overshadowing power from on high (Lk 1:35). The wool was the ancient fleece of Adam; the interlocking thread the spotless flesh of the Virgin. The weaver’s shuttle was propelled by the immeasurable grace of him who wore the robe; the artisan was the Word who entered in through her sense of hearing.
(Constas 2003: 137; for extra commentary, see Constas 1995)
Proclus used other poetic epithets in order to describe the Virgin’s instrumental role in the Incarnation, including ‘workshop for the union of natures’, ‘market-place of the contract of salvation’, ‘bridal chamber in which the Word took the flesh in marriage’, and ‘only bridge for God to mankind’.
The role that Marian homilies played in official discussions of Christology has not yet been fully explored by scholars. We know, for example, that Cyril of Alexandria preached his famous homily on the Virgin, in which he described her as ‘the inextinguishable lamp, the crown of virginity, the sceptre of orthodoxy … ’, at the cathedral of Ephesus, several days after Nestorius’s condemnation (Price 2008: 98). And Proclus’s first homily on the Theotokos was appended to the Acts of Ephesus, thus receiving transmission in manuscripts relating to the council—as well as in collections of liturgical sermons (Constas 2003: 127). However, the latter anthologies, which were inspired by the liturgical needs of Byzantine churches and monasteries, remained the more usual vehicle of homiletic transmission. Based around the liturgical year, which began on 1 September, such collections reveal not only the ongoing didactic function of Marian festal homilies, but probably also their original settings in the calendar.
Byzantine preachers, who could include not only bishops, but also some presbyters, monks, and even lay people such as the early tenth-century emperor, Leo VI, continued to inform their congregations of Mary’s Christological role throughout the Byzantine centuries. They also continued to use the rich typological and poetic imagery for the Virgin that had been initiated in the early fifth century; however, later preachers tended to prefer well-known biblical examples (such as ‘burning bush’, ‘Gideon’s fleece’, ‘the shaded mountain’, etc.) to the everyday metaphors that their fifth-century predecessors invented (Cunningham 2004). It remains unclear why Byzantine Marian homiletics and hymnography employed metaphorical language for the Theotokos more than for any other holy subject, including Christ. It is possible that this form of discourse expressed the mystery that surrounds her person—since she played an essential role in the Incarnation but is mentioned only fleetingly in the New Testament—better than discursive language could.
The addition of Marian feasts to the Constantinopolitan church calendar from about the middle of the sixth century onwards provided preachers with more opportunities to expound their Christological teaching in relation to her. The feast of Mary’s Annunciation (25 March) was added during the reign of Justinian I (527–565) (Van Esbroeck 1968; Allen 2011: 72). The theme of the Annunciation had in fact received homiletic treatment at least a century before its introduction into the liturgical calendar (Leroy 1967: 298–324; Caro 1971); however, its formal celebration in the Church inspired many more homilies. Preachers perceived this event as the inauguration of a new creation, as the ‘Second Adam’ (Christ) recapitulated God’s good work with the help of the ‘Second Eve’ (Mary) and restored the hope of salvation for humankind. For example, Andrew of Crete, who flourished in the early eighth-century, opened his homily on the Annunciation with the following words:
Universal joy has arrived today, releasing the previous curse. He who is everywhere has arrived that he may fill all things with joy. … God is on earth, God is from heaven, God is among human beings, God is carried in the womb of a Virgin …
(Translated in Cunningham 2008: 197)1
Many preachers, including Andrew, employed dramatic dialogue, based on the rhetorical device of ethopoiia (the depiction of human character by means of invented dialogue), in order to bring biblical (or even apocryphal) scenes to life for their congregations. One of the most developed examples of this device appears in Germanos of Constantinople’s sermon on the Annunciation; this work was also composed at the beginning of the eighth century. Germanos devotes two long sections of dialogue, composed of forty-eight speeches each which are arranged according to alphabetical acrostics—first between the Virgin Mary and the archangel Gabriel (based on Luke 1: 26–38) and next between Mary and Joseph (Matt 1: 18–25). Scholars have remarked on the way in which Germanos shows the Virgin’s intellectual journey from doubt to understanding and acceptance by means of these dialogues; the archangel and Joseph are treated in similar ways (Kazhdan 1999: 61–3; Cunningham 2003: 111–12; Arentzen 2019). As in the case of earlier Syriac dialogue poems (Brock 2012: 13–14), which may have influenced the Greek homilies on the Annunciation, dramatic dialogue reinforced the dogmatic teaching contained in these works. It emphasized the cosmic importance of Christ’s Incarnation by allowing congregations to experience dramatically this encounter between the divine and created realms. But above all, dialogue served to emphasize the human qualities not only of the historical figures, including Mary, who surrounded Jesus Christ, but also those of the Son of God himself.
Feasts celebrating Mary’s Conception, Nativity, Entrance into the Temple, secondary relics (a robe and a belt), and Dormition (‘falling asleep’ or death) were added to the Byzantine liturgical calendar between about the middle of the sixth and beginning of the eighth centuries (Cunningham 2008: 19–28; Krausmüller 2011: 220–3; pace Panou 2018: 41–8). The homilies for these feasts, which were mostly composed between the beginning of the seventh and the end of the ninth centuries (although later preachers continued to add to this corpus), continued to place Christological teaching at the core of their didactic efforts. Some preachers composed series of sermons (usually three) to be preached in the course of one all-night vigil preceding a feast (Chevalier 1937). The biblical types that evoke Mary’s role as the meeting-place or container of God in creation often appear in the context of praise or even invocation of the holy subject. As in the case of Middle Byzantine hymnography that dealt with the Theotokos, certain types began to be associated with particular feasts: for example, Mary’s identification with the Jewish tabernacle or temple, along with its furniture (such as the jar that contained manna or the table on which this stood), were used especially in homilies on her Entrance into the Temple (21 November) (see Ladouceur 2006: 10–11, whose findings concerning Marian hymnography also apply to homiletics). Dramatic dialogue could also be employed, but now in connection with other scenes involving encounters, such as Anna’s meeting with Zacharias, the high priest of the temple, or that of Mary with Symeon in the scene of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple. The dogmatic purpose of such rhetorical treatment remained the same as that described above in relation to the feast of the Annunciation; it is worth noting, however, that preachers treated apocryphal narratives, such as the Protevangelium of James, in the same way that they used the New Testament when they expanded the brief dialogic scenes that occur in all of these sources.
Homilies on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary began to proliferate after the emperor Maurice added the feast (celebrated on 15 August) to the calendar at the end of the sixth century. Preachers drew on various traditions concerning Mary’s death and assumption into heaven, which had been circulating in the Eastern Christian world since the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century (Shoemaker 2002). The surviving homilies focus especially on two aspects of the Virgin’s departure from earthly life: first, the holiness and purity that equipped her not only to give birth to God but also to escape the corruption that accompanies the deaths of all other human beings, and second, the resemblance of her experience to that of Christ. In order to demonstrate the parallels between Mary’s birth-giving and passage through death into eternal life, Byzantine preachers deliberately juxtaposed her virginity in partu and the incorruption of her body after death, as we see in the following homily by the eighth-century preacher, John of Damascus:
But even though your holy and blessed soul was separated from your privileged, immaculate body, and your body was committed to burial, as custom demanded, still it did not remain in death, nor was it dissolved by corruption. For she whose virginity remained undamaged in childbirth also kept her body undamaged in her passage through death. (Homily I on the Dormition)2
Although Byzantine preachers did not always agree on how long the Virgin’s body remained in the tomb or whether it was resurrected (that is, reunited with her soul) before or after its assumption into heaven, they universally accepted the reality of her death (Jugie 1944: 213–68, Mimouni 1995: 13–17, pace Shoemaker 2002: 16). Although these orators were keen to celebrate Mary’s glorious position in heaven, following her death and assumption, they preferred to adopt a ‘cultivated vagueness’ when it came to describing the exact nature of this state (Daley 1998: 27).
Secondly, in order to demonstrate the resemblance of Mary’s experience to that of Christ, Byzantine preachers emphasized the annunciation that took place (both before the birth of her Son and before her own death), the typological link between the carrying of her body to the tomb, and the transfer of the ark of the covenant to the holy of holies in the Jewish temple (with Christ being the antitype of the manna that was within the ark) (1 Kgs 8: 1–8 LXX), and above all, Mary’s repose for three days in the tomb and subsequent assumption into heaven. Such teaching reinforced the idea that the Virgin’s body, having contained the uncontainable God, was in some sense comparable—or even assimilated—to his in its deified purity. She remained the ‘container’ (as implied in the type of the ark of the covenant) but—in the same way that a holy space takes on the sanctifying power of the divine figure who inhabits it—Mary’s incorruptible flesh was imbued with Christ’s divine nature.
Although Byzantine preachers strove to maintain a balance between Mary’s (and Christ’s) human and divine qualities, this was pushed to the limit when they dealt with subjects such as the Dormition. Their concern with this issue, which is visible throughout the Byzantine period, manifested itself in different ways at different times. Another important development, which probably took place following the iconoclast controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries, was preachers’ increasing emphasis on the Virgin Mary’s ‘maternal’, or more emotional, qualities (Kalavrezou 1990; Tsironis 1998, 2010, 2011). This appears, for example, in George of Nikomedia’s two homilies on Mary’s lament at the foot of the cross and at the tomb (delivered on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, respectively). Inspired by Symeon’s prophecy that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35) and probably by Romanos the Melodist’s kontakion on the same subject, George describes the Virgin’s emotional and even physical agony as she watches her son die on the cross. Here the homilist juxtaposes Mary’s painless and virginal birth-giving with her visceral pain at this violent death (Constas 2014: 127). The separate moments in time illustrate once again—and in a vivid manner that would have engaged the emotions of the audience—the paradoxical divinity and humanity of Christ. And once again, this central Christian doctrine is reflected in the person of his mother.
There is another strand in Byzantine Marian preaching which deserves discussion even if it manifests itself less prominently than does the Christological element. This is the celebration of the Virgin Mary as a model of ascetic piety: she is described as virtuous, devoted to her prayer and studies, and always striving to become closer to God. The theme appeared first in a non-homiletic genre, namely, the fourth-century Athanasius of Alexandria’s First Letter to Virgins in which he provided a description of the Virgin Mary and exhorted his readers to follow her moral example (Brakke 1995: 276–9). And, although not taken up in festal Marian homilies of the fifth century, the theme re-emerged in a few later Marian orations. John of Damascus, for example, described Mary as follows in his homily on her Nativity:
Hail, Mary, sweetest little daughter of Anna! … How shall I portray your most pious bearing, your robe, your gracious countenance? [You possessed] mature judgement in a youthful body. Your modest dress escaped all softness and delicacy. Your gait was pious and undisturbed, free from foolish ostentation. Your manner was austere, but mixed with gaity … [you were] docile and obedient towards your parents, while your humble mind was engaged in the highest contemplation …
(Homily on the Nativity of the Most Pure Theotokos)3
It is worth noting that both Athanasius and John visualized the youthful Virgin Mary as growing up at home with her parents, rather than in the precincts of the Jerusalem temple. It is possible that they both viewed the Protevangelium of James more as a theological—and especially Christological—narrative than as an historical account.
Reflection on Mary’s asceticism and piety surfaced once again in monasteries of the Middle Byzantine period. Four surviving Lives of the Virgin, which probably emerged from this context, stress her commitment to prayer both during the time of her sojourn in the temple and after the ascension of Christ (Cunningham 2016). Although these texts cannot be classified formally as ‘homilies’, some of them show signs (especially in their manuscript transmission) of liturgical use in connection with the main feasts of the Mother of God (Shoemaker 2012: 2–3; Wenger 1955: 186). The possibility that these monastic Lives of the Virgin influenced some later preachers is reinforced by such works as the fourteenth-century Gregory Palamas’s homily on the Annunciation. This is a masterpiece of late Byzantine spiritual reflection, as Gregory describes the Virgin adopting a ‘holy stillness’ that led her on ‘a new and secret road to heaven, the road—if I may so express it—of noetic silence’ (Ware 1990: 39; cf. Veniamin 2009: 437–8). It is possible that such meditation on the Virgin’s hesychastic practices, which became more common during the late Byzantine centuries, led to her adoption as the chief patroness of monastic centres such as Mt Athos.
It should be evident by now that Byzantine preachers employed not only biblical, but also apocryphal, sources when they celebrated the Virgin Mary’s life, death, and assumption into heaven. The term ‘apocryphal’ refers here to the non-canonical but widely disseminated texts concerning Mary’s conception, infancy, and childhood in the temple as well as those that treated her final years, death, and assumption. For the first part of the Virgin’s life, the main source in the Greek-speaking Christian world was the second-century text known as the Protevangelium of James (Elliott 1993: 57–67). The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which was composed in Latin sometime after the end of the fifth century, did not circulate widely—if at all—in the Byzantine empire (Elliott 1993: 84–99). The accounts of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition were transmitted in two main versions, which are known as the ‘Palm of the Tree of Life’ and ‘Bethlehem’ traditions (Shoemaker 2002: 32–57). The main sources on which Byzantine preachers drew for this part of Mary’s legendary life and death were an early seventh-century homily on the Dormition by John of Thessalonica (Daley 1998: 47–70) and a discourse on the same subject that was attributed to John the Evangelist (Shoemaker 2002: 51).
The use of the term ‘apocryphal’ for this important corpus—which circulated widely and was translated into many languages—is questionable. Simon Mimouni suggests that existing scholarly classifications, such as ‘apocryphal’ and ‘canonical’, are unhelpful (Mimouni 1995: 37–42), while Sever Voicu argues that such texts were read aloud in liturgical contexts throughout the early Christian and Byzantine periods (Voicu 2011). However, it is clear that Byzantine preachers were aware of the extra-canonical nature of these works and only gradually began to cite them openly. The introduction of the main Marian feasts from the middle of the sixth century onwards seems to have loosened such inhibitions; it is from this period onward that we find preachers openly quoting and commenting on the Marian apocryphal corpus. Even so, there are signs in the homilies themselves that such freedom with the Virgin’s story may sometimes have attracted criticism. The eighth- and ninth-century Constantinopolitan preachers, Germanos and Photios, both attacked ideological opponents whom they accused—albeit in rather vague terms—of disbelieving aspects of Mary’s apocryphal story. It is also noticeable that certain preachers, including Andrew of Crete and Photios, were more circumspect in their referencing of such sources, although they clearly did use them (Cunningham 2016: 145).
Those preachers who embraced the apocryphal tradition treated texts such as the Protevangelium of James in the same way that they interpreted the New Testament. To take one example, Germanos of Constantinople retold the story of the Virgin’s presentation into the temple in two homilies. The second of these provides a dramatic re-enactment of the encounter that took place between Mary’s mother Anna and the high priest Zacharias. Anna describes the events that led up to her miraculous conception of the child and her decision to dedicate this long desired daughter to the temple. The high priest responds by celebrating the arrival of this holy child, whom he immediately recognizes as the fulfilment of prophecy and the ‘light of all those who lie in darkness’. The whole account is embellished with intertextual allusions to the scriptures (especially Psalm 44 LXX/45) and imagery that evokes Mary’s role in the forthcoming Incarnation of Christ (translated in Cunningham 2008: 166–9).4 Gregory Palamas would later develop the image of Mary as the ‘bride of Christ’, in her ascetic and prayerful way of life within the ‘holy of holies’ of the Jewish temple, even further, as we saw above. He connected the apocryphal story of the Virgin’s upbringing within this sanctified space with a hesychasm that allowed her to leave all material concerns behind and to enter fully into a divine way of life:
… she constructed a new and indescribable way to heaven, which I would call silence of the mind. Intent upon this silence, she flew high above all created things, saw God’s glory more clearly than Moses (cf. Ex 33:18–23), and beheld divine grace, which is not at all within the capacity of men’s senses, but is a gracious and holy sight for spotless souls and minds. Partaking of this vision, she became, according to the sacred hymnographers, a radiant cloud of the truly living water, the dawn of the mystical day, and the fiery chariot of the Word. (Veniamin 2009: 441–2)
The apocryphal narratives thus provided inspiration for some of the most high-flown reflection on Mary, the Mother of God, that appears in Byzantine festal preaching. Those preachers who accepted these legendary accounts interpreted them, as they did the Old and New Testaments, with the help of both literal (or historical) and allegorical methods of exegesis. The latter approach was in fact more congenial to most preachers, since they celebrated the Virgin Mary above all for her theological role in the mystery of the Incarnation.
Supplication to the Virgin Mary, as chief intercessor and protector of orthodox Christians, does feature prominently in festal preaching. However, it is noteworthy that such invocation was somewhat slow to develop in the homiletic tradition and, when it did emerge, was confined mainly to the concluding paragraphs of most sermons. It is also worth emphasizing that invocation of the Theotokos was somewhat different from that which was addressed to saints in panegyrical homilies or hymns. She was viewed as the intercessor par excellence, owing to the fact that she had conceived and given birth to the Son and Word of God—more than because of her dignity as a holy person in her own right. Legends about Mary’s dormition and assumption into heaven also contributed to her power as intercessor. From about the end of the fifth century onwards (when such narratives began to circulate in written form), the Virgin was visualized by many preachers as sitting at the right hand of Christ, the Righteous Judge, in heaven.
Although fifth-century Marian homilies celebrated her Christological importance, as we have already seen, they did not invoke her as intercessor. This general rule applies not only to the works of Hesychius of Jerusalem, Proclus of Constantinople, and Cyril of Alexandria, but also to earlier or contemporary Syriac liturgical writers, including Ephrem the Syrian. It suggests both that Christological dogmatic teaching dominated Marian discourse in this period and that she was not yet being invoked as intercessor—at least in liturgical contexts. Stephen Shoemaker nevertheless argues that devotion to the Virgin Mary was strong in the Early Church, suggesting that literary manifestations of the cult were more often hagiographical or sometimes even heterodox (Shoemaker 2016). Intercessory language began to appear in sixth-century liturgical works, including especially the kontakia of Romanos the Melodist—which have been described by some scholars as ‘sung homilies’ but which in fact follow a strict metrical hymnographic form (Arentzen 2017: 11). Many other homilies that probably belong to this period, such as (Ps.-) Basil of Seleucia’s Homily 39 on the Annunciation,5 contain intercessory material, but remain uncertain in their dates and attribution (Caro 1971). Nevertheless, on the basis of homilies that can firmly be situated in the fifth or sixth century, it is clear that a shift towards invoking Mary as intercessor and advocate for Christians occurred during this period.
The language that Middle and Late Byzantine preachers used to address the Mother of God as intercessor reflects the Christological foundations that had been established in the earlier centuries. The late ninth-century preacher and patriarch, Euthymios, for example, adopts the acclamation, ‘Rejoice’ or ‘Hail’, as used in the famous Akathistos Hymn, as he prays to the Virgin for help on behalf of all Christians: ‘Rejoice, protection of those who are your supplicants, through whom we are delivered from dangers; rejoice, obedient ear, which swiftly hearkens to our prayers …’ (Jugie 1990: 455, my translation). And Michael Psellos, who was active in the eleventh century, used his homily on the Annunciation to call Mary ‘the undamaged wall, the defence against enemies, the refuge of the faithful, and the joy of all who have faith in you …’ (Jugie 2003: 532).
Such invocation of Mary’s intercessory power could be collective, as in the above examples, or more personal—when preachers assumed the voice of individual Christians with their weight of sinfulness and desire to be saved (Krueger 2014). Some scholars have noted a development, especially during the iconoclast period (c. 730–843 ce) from primarily Christological or military images of the Virgin towards a more feminine and maternal one (Kalavrezou 1990; Tsironis 1998, 2011). They attribute this change to iconophile emphasis on the Christ’s true humanity in opposition to the iconoclast belief in God’s transcendence and immateriality. Such emphasis appears especially in homilies on the Crucifixion of Christ, probably delivered on Good Friday, in which preachers including George of Nikomedia provided dramatic accounts of Mary’s grief at the foot of the cross.
The intercessory content of Marian festal homilies is usually confined, however, to the concluding sections of these panegyrical works. This reflects the formal requirements of this rhetorical form, according to which the holy subject receives theological treatment in the body of the text and is invoked for collective or personal help only at the end. These sections do, however, reflect growing devotion to the Virgin Mary in the Byzantine world. As patroness and defender of Constantinople, she occupied a central place in every Christian’s spiritual world. Mary, the Mother of God, served as advocate for the faithful before Christ and guaranteed at least that their prayers would be heard.
Although Byzantine Marian festal homilies thus require further work, especially in the form of translations and commentary, enough of this material is now accessible for it to be taken seriously by Mariologists, historians, theologians, and interested lay readers. Byzantine preachers developed a distinctive Christological vision of Mary, the Mother of God, which stressed equally her humanity and exceptional holiness. The latter quality resists systematic study in the Byzantine context, since concepts such as ‘original sin’ or ‘Immaculate Conception’ are not strictly applicable to this tradition. The best way to sum up Byzantine teaching on the Virgin Mary, as it is expressed in festal homilies, is that it was predominantly Christological—but that it also expressed growing devotion to her as intercessor. The Christological emphasis, however, ensured that Mary continued to be viewed as the human, but also holy and pure, mother of Christ, the God-man. She embodied his human nature, which included lineage from Jewish priestly and royal lines, but also bore witness to his divinity by means of her virginity—which included all three stages (before, during, and after the birth). Above all, however, the Virgin Mary stood for the Church itself, as she willingly—and perpetually—embraced her Bridegroom, Christ. The Byzantine feasts that honoured the Theotokos offered Christians a chance to engage with this theological narrative, as they identified with her and entered into the Christological mystery.